The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle (76 page)

“Were sixty ships adequate to face six or seven hundred?” asked Gladstone.

Morpurgo glanced toward one of his fellow officers as if asking for patience. “Yes,” he said, “more than adequate. You have to understand, CEO, that six hundred Hawking drives may sound like a lot, but they’re nothing to worry about when they’re pushing singleships, or scouts, or one of those little five-person attack craft they call lancers. Task Force 42 consisted of almost
two dozen
main line spinships, including the carriers
Olympus Shadow
and
Neptune Station
. Each of these can launch more than a hundred fighters or ALRs.” Morpurgo fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a recom smokestick the size of a cigar, appeared to remember that Gladstone disapproved of them, and struck it back in his coat. He frowned. “When Task Force 87.2 completes its deployment, we’ll have more than enough firepower to deal with a dozen Swarms.” Still frowning, he nodded toward Yani to continue.

The colonel cleared his throat and gestured with his pointer toward the callup display. “As you can see, Task Force 42 had no trouble clearing the necessary volume of space to initiate farcaster construction. This construction was begun six weeks ago, WST, and completed yesterday at 1624 hours, standard. Initial Ouster harassing attacks were beaten off with no casualties for TF 42, and during the past forty-eight hours, a major battle has been waged between advance units of the task force and main Ouster forces. The focus of this skirmish has been here”—Yani gestured again, and a section of the callup pulsed with blue light beyond the tip of his pointer—“twenty-nine degrees above the plane of the ecliptic, thirty AU from Hyperion’s sun, approximately 0.35 AU from the hypothetical rim of the system’s Oört cloud.”

“Casualties?” said Leigh Hunt.

“Quite within acceptable limits for a firefight of this duration,” said the young colonel, who looked like he had never been within a light-year of hostile fire. His blond hair was carefully combed to the side and
gleamed under the intense glow of the spots. “Twenty-six Hegemony fast attack fighters destroyed or missing, twelve torpedo-carrying ALRs, three torchships, the fuel transport
Asquith’s Pride
, and the cruiser
Draconi III
.”

“How many
people
lost?” asked CEO Gladstone. Her voice was very quiet.

Yani glanced quickly at Morpurgo but answered the question himself. “Around twenty-three hundred,” he said. “But rescue operations are currently being carried out, and there is some hope of finding survivors of the
Draconi
.” He smoothed his tunic and went on quickly. “This should be weighed against confirmed kills of at least a hundred and fifty Ouster warships. Our own raids into the migration clust— the Swarm have resulted in an additional thirty to sixty destroyed craft, including comet farms, ore-processing ships, and at least one command cluster.”

Meina Gladstone rubbed her gnarled fingers together. “Did the casualty estimate—
our
casualties—include the passengers and crew of the destroyed treeship
Yggdrasill
, which we had chartered for the evacuation?”

“No, ma’am,” Yani responded briskly. “Although there was an Ouster raid in progress at the time, our analysis shows that the
Yggdrasill
was not destroyed be enemy action.”

Gladstone again raised an eyebrow. “What then?”

“Sabotage, as far as we can tell at this time,” said the Colonel. He prompted another Hyperion System diagram onto the callup.

General Morpurgo glanced at his comlog and said, “Uh-uh, skip to the ground defenses, Yani. The CEO has to deliver her speech in thirty minutes.”

I completed the sketch of Gladstone and Morpurgo, stretched, and looked around for another subject. Leigh Hunt seemed a challenge, with his nondescript, almost pinched features. When I glanced back up, a holoed globe of Hyperion ceased spinning and unwound itself into a series of flattened projections: oblique equirectangular, Bonne, orthographic, rosette, Van der Grinten, Gores, interrupted Goode homolosine, gnomonic, sinusoidal, azimuthal equidistant, polyconic, hypercorrected Kuwatsi, computer-eschered, Briesemeister, Buckminster, Miller cylindrical, multicoligraphed, and satplot standard, before resolving into a standard Robinson-Baird map of Hyperion.

I smiled. That had been the most enjoyable thing I’d seen since the briefing began. Several of Gladstone’s people were shifting with impatience.
They wanted at least ten minutes with the CEO before the broadcast began.

“As you know,” began the colonel, “Hyperion is Old Earth standard to nine point eight nine on the Thuron-Laumier Scale of—”

“Oh, for Chrissakes,” growled Morpurgo, “get to the troop dispositions and get it over with.”

“Yessir.” Yani swallowed and lifted his pointer. His voice was no longer confident. “As you know … I mean …” He pointed to the northernmost continent, floating like a poorly done sketch of a horse’s head and neck, terminating jaggedly where the beast’s chest and back muscles would begin. “This is Equus. It has a different official name, but everyone’s called it that since … this is Equus. The chain of islands running southeast … here and here … is called the Cat and Nine Tails. Actually, it’s an archipelago with more than a hundred … anyway, the second major continent is called Aquila, and perhaps you can see it’s shaped something like an Old Earth eagle, with the beak here … on the northwest coast … and the talons extended here, to the southwest … and at least one wing raised here, running to the northeast coast. This section is the so-called Pinion Plateau and is almost inaccessible due to the flame forests, but here … and here … to the southwest, are the main fiberplastic plantations …”

“The
disposition
of troops,” growled Morpurgo.

I sketched Yani. I discovered that it is impossible to convey the sheen of sweat with graphite.

“Yessir. The third continent is Ursus … looks a bit like a bear … but no FORCE troops landed there because it’s south polar, almost uninhabitable, although the Hyperion Self-defense Force keeps a listening post there …” Yani seemed to sense he was babbling. He drew himself up, wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, and continued in a more composed tone. “Primary FORCE:ground installations here … here … and here.” His pointer illuminated areas near the capital of Keats, high on the neck of Equus. “FORCE:space units have secured the primary spaceport at the capital as well as secondary fields here … and here.” He touched the cities of Endymion and Port Romance, both on the continent of Aquila. “FORCE:ground units have prepared defensive installations here …” Two dozen red lights winked on; most on the neck and mane areas of Equus, but several in Aquila’s Beak and Port Romance regions. “These include elements of the Marines, as well as ground defenses, ground-to-air and ground-to-space components. High Command expects that, unlike Bressia, there will be no
battles on the planet itself, but should they attempt an invasion, we will be ready for them.”

Meina Gladstone checked her comlog. Seventeen minutes remained until her live broadcast. “What about evacuation plans?”

Yani’s regained composure crumbled. He looked in some desperation toward his superior officers.

“No evacuation,” said Admiral Singh. “It was a feint, a lure for the Ousters.”

Gladstone tapped her fingers together. “There are several million people on Hyperion, Admiral.”

“Yes,” said Singh, “and we’ll protect them, but an evacuation of even the sixty thousand or so Hegemony citizens is quite out of the question. It would be chaos if we allowed all three million into the Web. Besides, for security reasons, it is not possible.”

“The Shrike?” queried Leigh Hunt.

“Security reasons,” repeated General Morpurgo. He stood up, took the pointer from Yani. The young man stood there for a second, irresolute, seeing no place to sit or stand, and then he moved to the rear of the room near me, stood at parade rest, and stared at something near the ceiling—possibly the end of his military career.

“Task Force 87.2 is in-system,” said Morpurgo. “The Ousters have pulled back to their Swarm center, about sixty AU from Hyperion. To all intents and purposes, the system is secure. Hyperion is secure. We’re waiting for a counterattack, but we know that we can contain it. Again, to all intents and purposes, Hyperion is now part of the Web. Questions?”

There were none. Gladstone left with Leigh Hunt, a pack of senators, and her aides. The military brass gravitated to huddles, apparently as dictated by rank. Aides scattered. The few reporters allowed in the room ran to their imager crews waiting outside. The young colonel, Yani, remained at parade rest, his eyes unfocused, his face very pale.

I sat for a moment, staring at the callup map of Hyperion. The continent Equus’s resemblance to a horse was greater at this distance. From where I sat, I could just make out the mountains of the Bridle Range and the orange-yellow coloring of the high desert below the horse’s “eye.” There were no FORCE defensive positions marked northeast of the mountains, no symbols at all besides a tiny red glow which might have been the dead City of Poets. The Time Tombs were not marked at all. It was as if the Tombs had no military significance, no part to play in the day’s proceedings. But somehow I knew better.
Somehow I suspected that the entire war, the movement of thousands, the fate of millions—perhaps billions—depended upon the actions of six people in that unmarked stretch of orange and yellow.

I folded my sketchbook, stuffed my pencils in pockets, looked for an exit, found and used it.

Leigh Hunt met me in one of the long hallways that led to the main entrance. “You are leaving?”

I took a breath. “Aren’t I allowed to?”

Hunt smiled, if one could call that upward folding of thin lips a smile. “Of course, M. Severn. But CEO Gladstone has asked me to tell you that she would like to speak to you again this afternoon.”

“When?”

Hunt shrugged. “Any time after her speech. At your convenience.”

I nodded. Literally millions of lobbyists, job seekers, would-be biographers, business people, fans of the CEO, and potential assassins would give almost anything to have a minute with the Hegemony’s most visible leader, a few seconds with CEO Gladstone, and I could see her “at my convenience.” No one ever said the universe was sane.

I brushed past Leigh Hunt and made for the front door.

By long tradition, Government House had no public farcaster portals within its walls. It was a short walk past the main-entrance security baffles, across the garden, to the low, white building that served as press headquarters and terminex. The newsteeps were clustered around a central viewing pit, where the familiar face and voice of Lewellyn Drake, “the voice of the All Thing,” gave background to CEO Gladstone’s speech “of vital importance to the Hegemony.” I nodded in his direction, found an unused portal, presented my universal card, and went in search of a bar.

The Grand Concourse was, once you got there, the one place in the Web where you could farcast for free. Every world in the Web had offered at least one of its finest urban blocks—TC
²
provided twenty-three blocks—for shopping, entertainment, fine restaurants, and bars. Especially bars.

Like River Tethys, the Grand Concourse flowed between military-sized
farcaster portals two hundred meters high. With wraparound, the effect was of an infinite main street, a hundred-kilometer torus of material delights. One could stand, as I did that morning, under the brilliant sun of Tau Ceti and look down the Concourse to the nighttime midway of Deneb Drei, alive with neon and holos, and catch a glimpse of the hundred-tiered Main Mall of Lusus, while knowing that beyond it lay the shadow-dappled boutiques of God’s Grove with its brick concourse and elevators to Treetops, the most expensive eatery in the Web.

I didn’t give a damn about all that. I just wanted to find a quiet bar.

TC
²
bars were too filled with bureaucrats, teeps, and business types, so I caught one of the Concourse shuttles and stepped off on Sol Draconi Septem’s main drag. The gravity discouraged many—it discouraged
me
—but it meant that the bars were less full, and those there had come to drink.

The place I chose was a ground-level bar, almost hidden under the support pillars and service chutes to the main shopping trellis, and it was dark inside: dark walls, dark wood, dark patrons—their skin as black as mine was pale. It was a good place to drink, and I did so, starting with a double Scotch and getting more serious as I went along.

Even there I couldn’t be free of Gladstone. Far across the room, a flatscreen TV showed the CEO’s face with the blue-and-gold background she used for state broadcasts. Several of the other drinkers had gathered to watch. I heard snatches of the speech: “… to insure the safety of Hegemony citizens and … cannot be allowed to endanger the safety of the Web or our allies in … thus, I have authorized a full military response to …”

“Turn that goddamned thing down!” I was amazed to realize that it was me shouting. The patrons glowered over their shoulders, but they turned it down. I watched Gladstone’s mouth move a moment, and then I waved to the bartender for another double.

Sometime later, it might have been hours, I looked up from my drink to realize that there was someone sitting across from me in the dark booth. It took me a second, blinking, to recognize who it was in the dim light. For an instant my heart raced as I thought,
Fanny
, but then I blinked again and said, “Lady Philomel.”

She still wore the dark blue dress I’d seen her in at breakfast. Somehow it seemed cut lower now. Her face and shoulders seemed to glow in the near-darkness. “M. Severn,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “I’ve come to redeem your promise.”

“Promise?” I waved the bartender over, but he did not respond. I frowned and looked at Diana Philomel. “What promise?”

“To draw me, of course. Did you forget your promise at the party?”

I snapped my fingers, but the insolent barkeep still did not deign to look my way. “I did draw you,” I said.

“Yes,” said Lady Philomel, “but not
all
of me.”